A resident cuts the grass growing around new trees planted in an area reclaimed from illegal cattle ranching, in the La Colorada sector within the Maya Biosphere Reserve, in Guatemala’s Petén region, October 5, 2023. JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP
The chainsaw stopped, Emilio Latin looked up and took several small leaps backwards without taking his eyes off the trunk. First there was the sound, crack, then the earth shook, shrubs went down like matchsticks, the crash intensified as the American mahogany fell and bounced. Then total silence. Relieved, Latin wiped his forehead and said, “That was a tough one.” It took the 24-year-old just half an hour to get through it, but in a temperature of 37 degrees, his shirt was soaked through.
This noble wood is one of the 14 species that can be cut during the felling period granted to community forest concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) in northern Guatemala, bordering Mexico to the north and Belize to the east. Its two million hectares preserved in the Petén region make it the largest reserve in Guatemala and the Selva Maya, which stretches from Mexico to the Darien forest in Panama.
“It’s a 14-million-hectare forest massif, one of the largest in the world, a key natural corridor between North and South America and a biodiversity hotspot,” explained French ecologist Marie-Ange Ngo Bieng, a researcher at the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) in Montpellier. She approached the trunk that Latin was beginning to prune: 30 meters high, with wide buttresses. “This mahogany tree was at least 200 years old,” estimated the expert. But it was sacrificed because it was showing signs of weakness, explained Jorge Ramirez, in his forties and with a perfectly trimmed beard.
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For the past 10 years, Ramirez has been the technical manager of the Arbol Verde (“green tree”) forest concession. “It had anthills in its roots and dead branches. We preferred to cut it down, because it was going to fall and damage this one, which shows all the indications of becoming a vigorous seed-bearer,” he said, turning to the right.
‘Helping nature regenerate’
Latin swallowed a large gulp of water while his 19-year-old assistant read the GPS map to find the next tree. The two loggers resumed their walk, a wide-bladed chainsaw slung over their shoulders. In the dry season, they cut down around 15 trees a day, but never more than two per hectare of the 65,000 hectares of the reserve managed by Arbol Verde.
A field of grass in an area reclaimed from illegal cattle ranching in the La Colorada sector of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala’s Petén region, October 5, 2023. JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP
A few hundred meters away, a caterpillar tractor cut a path through this impenetrable green mass. The trees to be protected have been marked beforehand, but the rest fall, unceremoniously. A four-meter-wide furrow allows the tractors to pass, dragging the trunks along on a cable. The scene seemed violent, with the noise of the engines, the smell of diesel and the shrubs torn from the earth. “But it’s quite the opposite in reality. These forest concessions are a model, both socially and ecologically. They teach us how those who live off the forest know how to protect it,” said Ngo Bieng.
The plot from which the mahogany was taken will remain untouched for another 30 years. “That should be enough time for the forest to recover,” said the scientist. Alongside her, Ramirez added, “We’re going to help nature regenerate in the next rainy season. We’ve got nurseries to replant the forest and the path we’ve just laid out for the tractors. We’re also taking the opportunity to create fire breaks.”
This set of ecological rules is followed in the 12 forest concessions that together manage nearly 550,000 hectares of the biosphere reserve, which is almost 40% of its surface area. These concessions are the result of peace agreements signed in 1996 between the government of Alvaro Arzu, the United Nations and the guerrillas (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity). They included an agrarian section which provided for families displaced during the war and communities of chicleros (gum harvesters), who had been settled in this forest since the early 20th century to extract the natural chewing gum, to be granted the right to exploit the forest’s resources sustainably.
‘Big landowners ruled’
Concession contracts are drawn up for a renewable term of 25 years. “The state owns the land, sets the rules and extends the contracts if the clauses are fulfilled. In exchange, the communities pay taxes and also fund Guatemala’s National Council for Protected Areas [CONAP],” explained Byron Castellanos, director of the Balam environmental organization in Petén, a member of CONAP.
In the forest at Puerto Arturo, in the heart of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Petén region of Guatemala, October 5, 2023. ALBERTO PENA / AFP
In recent years, all the contracts have been extended, with targets met and even exceeded: Deforestation is virtually nil (0.4%) in forest concessions, whereas it is three times higher in the reserve core (36% of the MBR). In its five national parks, despite being in protected areas, invasions by cattle owners and illegal trafficking of all kinds are rampant.
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This damage can be seen in the Cruce la Colorada forest concession (20,500 hectares), where the 600 inhabitants inherited deforested land to plant grass and raise cattle. “Big landowners ruled here. It was a violent battle to get the land back, and they even killed one of us in 2010,” recounted Antonio Juarez, 47. “But when there’s a social organization like our cooperative and the state on our side, we end up winning. In 2017, the army evicted them and reclaimed the last 10 hectares we were missing.”
To explain the work the community has to do, Juarez invited us to touch the clumps of fat, thick, invasive grass that have replaced the forest: “[The grass] is hard, impossible to pull out by hand. Without fire, we’d never get rid of it.” It’s 7 am and the fire team is preparing to burn a 2-hectare plot. There are only palm trees here, which will be protected, and on the ground 40-centimeter clumps of this grass imported from England in the 19th century, intended for sheep.
‘The animals are already coming back’
Juarez prepared his drone and five young men surrounded the plot, each carrying a sprayer filled with water on his back. With his walkie-talkie on his belt, Sergio Navas, 28, positioned himself to the east with his two assistants. All three were carrying torches and moved forward into the thickening smoke. The flames were extinguished immediately. At the end of the maneuver, in front of an expanse of ash, the team treated themselves to a Coca-Cola and chips in the back of the pick-up. “This is the second time we’ve burned and the grass has come back, almost as strong as [in 2023],” commented Navas. It will be another year before they set about restoring this plot.
On the plots that have been replanted in an attempt to reproduce as much of the forest’s diversity as possible (caoba, missionary cedar, feather tree, calophyllum brasiliense…), the trees are already five to eight meters tall and small groves are taking over and reducing the grass fields. “The animals are already coming back,” explained Juarez as he opened a trap camera strategically placed between the fields and the reforestation zone. A deer and a fox appeared on the screen as night fell.
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“These first victories encourage us all to keep going in this direction. There’s no other option anyway,” concluded a smiling Juarez. The community also has to keep a constant watch on any invasion or smoke on the territory, using drones, patrols and fire towers.
Creating ‘social development’
Cruce la Colorada is adjacent to the reserve’s so-called “buffer zone” (24%), a 15-kilometer-wide strip along the reserve’s southern border where illegal activities such as cattle ranching and agriculture have become established. Guatemala’s CONAP (which declined to answer our questions) does not have the means to act, and even less so in the national parks in the north and east, on the border with Mexico, where crime is also rife, with migrant and drug smuggling and clandestine airstrips.
“The criminal groups are bringing in inhabitants who have to collaborate with their trafficking activities, including timber and wild animals. We can see that the state won’t have the capacity to protect the RBM any time soon. Only concessions have succeeded in preserving the forest while also creating social development,” said Castellanos.
This virtuous model seems to be at work in every activity in the village of Uaxactun, whose inhabitants manage the largest forest concession on 83,000 hectares in the center of the RBM. Its 800 inhabitants harvest timber but also derive a large part of their income from the forest’s secondary products, such as xate palm, allspice and the nuts of the ramon, the Maya nut tree.
Food self-sufficiency
Uaxactun is just a clearing. A large playground at its center, bordered by the clinic, school, church and wooden houses. The top of the clearing is dominated by the sorting shed for xate, the deep green palm that keeps for 40 days after cutting and is often used in party decorations in the US. The men set out early in the morning to harvest it in the forest, and the women carefully pack it for transport to Miami.
Women select xate leaves for floral arrangements, in Uaxactun (Guatemala), September 2019. JOHAN ORDONEZ / AFP
The same employees also look after the nursery next door, where both tree seedlings and xate palm are grown. “Before, we used to harvest a lot for resellers who paid very little. But now that we have the concession, we have our own sales channel and a management plan that enables us to reforest certain areas, while we harvest in others,” explained Erwin Maas, 47, one of Uaxactun’s leaders.
This plan leaves village families with an agricultural area in which to plant corn, beans and squash, ensuring their food self-sufficiency. The women of Uaxactun also make handcrafted dolls from the leaves of the corn cobs. And wood from the forest is transformed into planks, furniture and sculptures in the sawmill and joinery at the other end of the village. “Our priority has always been to develop an economy and keep our young people here. Over the past 20 years, we’ve trained them in a whole range of forestry trades with this aim in mind,” said Maas proudly.
The inhabitants, all partners in the concession, have decided that the profits from the operation will go towards education once salaries have been paid. The running of the primary and secondary schools, and payment of scholarships for higher education away from the village. “In Uaxactun, no one is rich, but we live much better than in the rest of the country,” said Maas, one of the few descendants of the Q’eqchi’ Maya ethnic group still living in Uaxactun.
Wages in the concessions are higher than the Guatemalan average, thanks in particular to the use of certified timber. Maas has recently started developing an ecotourism activity on foot and by bike. Anything seems possible in this region, which is home to numerous archaeological sites. “The key to success is that we don’t own the land; nobody can sell it or speculate on it. This removes a lot of problems for us,” said Maas.
CIRAD plans to support this success by providing scientific data on community management for three years, thanks to a budget of €4.3 million, half of which is financed by the Fonds Français pour l’Environnement Mondial. “These Guatemalan forest concessions are truly a textbook case: their conservation methods prove that preserving tropical forests works better with local populations than without them,” concluded Ngo Bieng.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.
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Publish date : 2024-09-01 13:10:00
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